Winter [with snow] makes for more pensive pass times… Following up to my summer 2021 book list, here’s a modest attempt to a thoughtful winter reading motivated in part by recent Twitter exchanges on economists reading (or not)… the classical authors.

This year, 2021, has been an oddly difficult one…filled with hope, promise, disappointment, and more tragic disappointment and hope again. Perhaps, these books may help one shift their thoughts, albeit temporarily, away from the hard realities outside and gain emotional strength and practical wisdom to carry on.

Carry on we must…

The books are listed alphabetically by author. Very subjectively, reflecting my current interests, mixed with the classics and books about them are the readings on New York City, the post-socialist transition economies, and modern international economics.

Happy New Year and Happy Readings!

1. Ivan Berend. 2009. From the Soviet Bloc to the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Thomas Dyja. 2021. New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster
3. Henry George. 1879. Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy. Available online: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55308 and https://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm
4. Robert L. Heilbroner. 1999. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers. 7^th ed. New York, NY: Touchstone by Simon & Schuster
5. Tarron Khemraj. 2014. Money, Banking and the Foreign Exchange Market in Emerging Economies. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
6. Janos Kornaj. 1992. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
7. Hyman Minsky. 2008 [1986]. Stabilizing an Unstable Economy. New York, NY: McGraw Hill [New Haven and London: Yale University Press].
8. Susie Pak. 2013. Gentlemen Bankers The World of J. P. Morgan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9. Steven Pressman. 2013. Fifty Major Economists. 3^rd ed. London and New York: Routledge.
10. Adam Smith. 2010 [1759] The Theory of Moral Sentiments. New York, NY: Penguin.

Of course, for more recently published popular books, one option may be a list produced by Financial Times, click here.

Happy New Year! :-)